Carrying weapons openly in a non-violent demo destrpys the whole purpose of the demo: and invites massive police violence.

The legal citations/obsrvations in comment 60 reflect the chasm between theory and practice.

Attempting to implement those citations/observations could be an effective means of “suicide by cop”, however.

Please check it out and spread the word. People need to know that this was a peaceful protest, not riot.

Your Right of Defense Against Unlawful Arrest

“Citizens may resist unlawful arrest to the point of taking an arresting officer’s life if necessary.” Plummer v. State, 136 Ind. 306. This premise was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case: John Bad Elk v. U.S., 177 U.S. 529. The Court stated: “Where the officer is killed in the course of the disorder which naturally accompanies an attempted arrest that is resisted, the law looks with very different eyes upon the transaction, when the officer had the right to make the arrest, from what it does if the officer had no right. What may be murder in the first case might be nothing more than manslaughter in the other, or the facts might show that no offense had been committed.”

“An arrest made with a defective warrant, or one issued without affidavit, or one that fails to allege a crime is within jurisdiction, and one who is being arrested, may resist arrest and break away. lf the arresting officer is killed by one who is so resisting, the killing will be no more than an involuntary manslaughter.” Housh v. People, 75 111. 491; reaffirmed and quoted in State v. Leach, 7 Conn. 452; State v. Gleason, 32 Kan. 245; Ballard v. State, 43 Ohio 349; State v Rousseau, 241 P. 2d 447; State v. Spaulding, 34 Minn. 3621.

“When a person, being without fault, is in a place where he has a right to be, is violently assaulted, he may, without retreating, repel by force, and if, in the reasonable exercise of his right of self defense, his assailant is killed, he is justified.” Runyan v. State, 57 Ind. 80; Miller v. State, 74 Ind. 1.

“These principles apply as well to an officer attempting to make an arrest, who abuses his authority and transcends the bounds thereof by the use of unnecessary force and violence, as they do to a private individual who unlawfully uses such force and violence.” Jones v. State, 26 Tex. App. I; Beaverts v. State, 4 Tex. App. 1 75; Skidmore v. State, 43 Tex. 93, 903.

“An illegal arrest is an assault and battery. The person so attempted to be restrained of his liberty has the same right to use force in defending himself as he would in repelling any other assault and battery.” (State v. Robinson, 145 ME. 77, 72 ATL. 260).

“Each person has the right to resist an unlawful arrest. In such a case, the person attempting the arrest stands in the position of a wrongdoer and may be resisted by the use of force, as in self- defense.” (State v. Mobley, 240 N.C. 476, 83 S.E. 2d 100).

“One may come to the aid of another being unlawfully arrested, just as he may where one is being assaulted, molested, raped or kidnapped. Thus it is not an offense to liberate one from the unlawful custody of an officer, even though he may have submitted to such custody, without resistance.” (Adams v. State, 121 Ga. 16, 48 S.E. 910).

“Story affirmed the right of self-defense by persons held illegally. In his own writings, he had admitted that ‘a situation could arise in which the checks-and-balances principle ceased to work and the various branches of government concurred in a gross usurpation.’ There would be no usual remedy by changing the law or passing an amendment to the Constitution, should the oppressed party be a minority. Story concluded, ‘If there be any remedy at all … it is a remedy never provided for by human institutions.’ That was the ‘ultimate right of all human beings in extreme cases to resist oppression, and to apply force against ruinous injustice.’” (From Mutiny on the Amistad by Howard Jones, Oxford University Press, 1987, an account of the reading of the decision in the case by Justice Joseph Story of the Supreme Court.

As for grounds for arrest: “The carrying of arms in a quiet, peaceable, and orderly manner, concealed on or about the person, is not a breach of the peace. Nor does such an act of itself, lead to a breach of the peace.” (Wharton’s Criminal and Civil Procedure, 12th Ed., Vol.2: Judy v. Lashley, 5 W. Va. 628, 41 S.E. 197)

we’re still waiting, oh so full of hope!

Except I doubt anyone is buying it.

Amen, Citizen, and thank you for your service…I watched on television from a small dispensary in the middle of the desert at White Sands Missle Range as folks including my sister who was a freshman at the University of Chicago got chased to hell and back by the fascist pigs. Nuthin has changed except the level of sophistication and equipment of the terror police.

During the Chicago Democratic Convention, the peaceful protesters (I was among them) walked towards the Convention Center from the park where they had assembled. We were warned that if anyone tried violence we should consider them an agent provacateur.

Police barricaded the side-streets, so only the main road where the peace marchers were moving was accessible, but that road was dead-ended in front of the Convention hotel, by jeeps with barbed-wire-covered bumpers, so there was no place for marchers to move. Then busses of Chicago cops rode into the main road, banging nightsticks on the bus windows, chanting “kill, kill, kill” and waded into the peaceful crowds, banging heads and then arresting people.

My boyfriend yanked me by the arm to the sidewalk, as I was about to sit where I was and cover my head with my hands. We watched the other marchers get bashed and hauled to police busses, as we cried. Some people ran into the underground garage, and my best friend’s dad ran carloads of marchers out of the garage until he found his daughters.

Hubert Humphrey, who did not stop the mayhem, was not elected that year. I refused to vote for him, and wasted my vote on comedian Dick Gregory. Mayor Daley was seen on TV at the Convention, cheering the cops on and cursing the peaceful demonstrators.